Originally Posted by
Dunbar
Saying that you should just live with feeling hungry for large chunks of your waking hours strikes me as a tad bit radical.
You seemed aghast at him doing 40k on a fasting day, like it's unbearable hunger. I'm saying that if you go on such a program for a few weeks, many really don't feel that hungry anymore, it's not unpleasant. And that it's possible that for some on the forum struggling to lose despite riding a lot, that forcing the feeling for awhile semi-regularly, can help better tune the hunger response. I didn't let myself get really hungry for years, and I got fat. After trying fasting, now I realize that hunger is often just thirst, or maybe boredom, and will often just go away even without eating anything. Now I feel a better distinction between this "I could eat" feeling and true hunger OMG got to eat something really soon "I need to eat"!
One of the benefits of doing enough exercise is that it's possible to eat more without gaining weight. So I just don't see the point of trying to mix a calorie restricted diet with moderate to higher levels of cardiovascular exercise.
How are you defining calorie restricted? The thing with ADF and similar IF regimes is that the non-fasting days are not calorie reduced *at all* vs. maintenance level, some protocols are even "ad libitum", eat as much as you want. The calorie reduction is confined to the "fasting" super-low calorie days. So the net reduction over the entire week is usually very similar to a less calorie restricted every day diet. Some people are better able to adhere this pattern than trying to cut back every day.
Weight loss with exercise only, no calorie restriction at all, is fairly unlikely to succeed IMO, too easy to undo an hour of exercise in a few minutes of eating.